88 ..... to his friends '" f 't. < if- :;.f :..: :0. , " -:. : , & øJ. '00 , r-yj; ('J:' .. ,"<0 -''4 ;.< jI' .0" . " ' I .:':: , < .:::: '. ".:." :..... :'-:::: ''':-:'" '::=:: ..... ø 4'- # '"5' .; :... .:...:: ;# $; :,<& ., 0 I .. · AIS A LOZ · O. 1 0 '%'" or' cologne. . . after shave and other things .... from paris I I I California Portland Seanle Phoenix Chicago FEßRIJARY 2", 1 9 7 9 man had a dream that the bay at the head of the Crystal River coul d he made a sanctuary for manatees, with a speed limit enforced on powerboats. Legislation providing manatee protec- tion was passed in Florida in 1978, but will not come into effect until later this year. The second part of Hartman's dream-that the public might look at manatees through glass-bottom boats- can never be realized. It would have been a lovely way to preserve this love- ly place, but the weeds got there first. There are limits to the pollution and disturbance that manatees can stand. The great estuary of Old Tampa Bay, for instance, was once a natural gather- ing place but, except for a few hardy individuals, is no longer frequented by them. Farther south, however, there is sanctuary in the Everglades, and this area probably has a substantIal manatee population. There are few manatees around the Keys-perhaps because of a lack of fresh water-but they can be found on the entire east coast of Flori- da, and they occasionally migrate as far north as North Carolina. On a worldwide scale, the future of the Sirenians is probably far less rosy than it js in Florida. The manatee's cousin the dugong has disappeared from wide areas of its Indo-Pacific range. Some of the African and Amazonian manatees are protected, but neverthe- less they are often harpooned and net- ted wherever human beings can find them. Today, the powerboat is spread- ing along remote shores as waterweeds are in the Crystal River, and this means that there can be few manatee sanctu- arIes left. Practical-minded biologists have tried to devise a use for manatees. Manatee steaks for the gourmet market? Mana- tees as aquatic lawnmowers, chewing their way through weed-choked water- ways? There are several problems in the way of such schemes. One is the very slow birth rate. It would take six or seven years to raise a manatee, from conception to maturity. Outside of the tropics, there would be the problem of protecting the manatees from cold spells, which can be fatal. Still another problem would be finding ponds big enough to hold a large population of manatees. It is probable that for as long as we allow manatees to survive they will go on leading utterly useless lives. Useless to people, that is. There is a large school of thought, among both laymen and professIonals, that finds uselessness in animals intolerable. People who hold this view believe that every animal must serve a human purpose-that to